Palmanova

The fortress city of Palmanova, also known as the starry city due to its polygonal 9-point plant, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2017 and is part of the transnational site “Venetian defense works between the 16th and 17th centuries: “State of Earth – Western Sea State”. Within this group there are five other fortified cities in Italy, in Croatia and Montenegro. Palmanova was built in 1593 in the north of Aquileia and designed to accommodate twenty thousand people. The fortress of the city looks like an urban nucleus inserted within three city walls, two Venetian walls and the outermost French perimeter, which give the city its extraordinary nine-pointed star shape. Today it is one of the best preserved examples of military architecture and an ideal Renaissance city. It is a site representative of the entire defensive system, designed and built by the Republic of Venice to control its territories and the trade routes that extended from the Adriatic Sea to the Middle East.